Our group has a key focus on improving access to valuable organic molecules through the discovery of new synthetic methods. Key themes in this work are:
The high failure rate of drugs preclinical and clinical development is often associated adverse effects in healthy tissue. Our group is seeking to address this through design of drug molecules that localise in the diseased tissue, sparing healthy tissue. These efforts fall into two categories:
Kinetophore design: a kinetophore is a structural motif that can be connected to the pharmacophore to control its relative distribution into different tissues (diseased vs healthy).
Antibody catalysts conjugates (ACCs): Antibodies are highly effective in directing tethered cargo to specific diseased cells that express an antigen for the antibody. By attaching a catalyst to a disease specific antibody we can preload the diseased tissue with a catalyst for prodrug activation. When a suitable prodrug is administered it is converted to the active drug only at the site of the diseased tissue.
The above efforts in smart-molecule design are being applied to a number of areas of drug discovery: